//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: Call for the Bed 
// Story: Pinker, Paler, Scolder....Pie 
// by ponichaeism 
//------------------------------//

	Pinkie reared back on her hind legs and pointed to her right-hoof alligator. 
"Hit it, Gummy!"
The alligator blinked as he stood on the table next to Pinkie's phonograph. Although it was impossible to tell if his tail hit the needle's arm and made it swing out over the revolving record on purpose, or if it was simply some autonomic reflex making his tail flick wildly about that created a happy accident, the needle nevertheless plopped down and translated the vinyl grooves into crackles and hisses that came out of the phonograph's horn. 
"Ah-hem-hem," Pinkie said, holding a hoof to her chest. "Mi mi mi miii!"
As she waited for the song to start, she picked up the scroll in front of her and unfurled it. Scrawled atop the top of the parchment was 'Emergency Song #2348: for purposes of celebration of rescue of friend/acquaintance from water well mishap (leap year variant)'.
As the bouncy horns started blaring from the phonograph, she bounced along with them and sang, "Oh, if you should be feeling down, I'll tell you why you shouldn't frown--"
A harsh shout came through her bedroom window: "Pie!"
Pinkie froze in mid-air, but the record scratch she expected to hear didn't happen; the phonograph was still spinning. She landed lightly, faced the alligator, and drew her hoof across her throat. 
"Gummy, stop the music!" she called.
Again, it was impossible to tell if the alligator put any conscious thought into snapping its toothless jaws down on the spinning vinyl record; and yet as the record revolved it took him with it, where he knocked the needle away and killed the music. While Pinkie trotted to her window, Gummy let go of the record. It flung him through the air behind her. The pink pony leaned out the window and, over the small backyard separating the rear of Sugarcube Corners from the building across the way, saw the wrinkled face of her donkey neighbor leaning out of her own window 
"Pie!" Polly T. Burro called. "Could you be ever so thoughtful and stop that racket, please?!"
Pinkie sighed and rolled her eyes. It was a familiar conversation, one they'd had many times in the month since the Burros had moved to Ponyville.
What is it about those donkeys than means no fun? she thought. She's like Cranky Doodle times....a million!
She leaned out the window and called, "But Polly, I have to practice my emergency songs!"
The donkey raised an eyebrow. "Whatever do you mean, 'emergency songs'? Why....would you be needing songs in an emergency?"
Pinkie chuckled. "They're not for emergencies, they're in case something unexpected happens and I don't have one ready. That's the emergency! You've always gotta have a song ready! How else am I going to reveal plot critical details while spreading so much fuuun?!"
Polly T. Burro cocked her head and asked, "Plot critical details?"
"Yeah, like say Applejack starts planting some new trees, but she didn't tell me any details in advance! That's pretty critical, because then I'm going to just be thinking, 'Oh, Pinkie, how am I supposed to siiing about this? I don't have a song ready!' And it's just going to drive me BANANAS!"
"Well, Pinkie," Polly said, her saccharine voice laced with arsenic, "surely you don't need to be practicing songs now, do you?"
"But....but....can't you just....close your window?"
"No, I most certainly can not. The night air does wonders for my fillyish complexion."
Pinkie's head drooped until it slammed into the window sill. "Fiiine," she called. "But if something wonderfuntastic happens to you tomorrow, don't expect me to sing about it!"
"No need to make such a dreadful ruckus," Polly said, narrowing her eyes. "It was only a simple request." She rolled her eyes and, in a very loud voice, muttered to herself, "The absolute nerve of someponies!"
And with that, Polly T. Burro turned off her light. 
Pinkie trudged over to her phonograph, hit the switch to stop it spinning, and collapsed into her bed. She reached over the side of the bed and yanked her alligator up by his tail. She raised him to eye-level.
"Gummy, what are we going to do with that grumpy donkey?"


"I just don't know what I'm going to do," Pinkie cried out as she lay sprawled out face-down on the picnic blanket. "I haven't had my daily recommended dose of fun in a month, ever since that party-pooper moved in. It's always 'Pie, stop that!' or 'Pie, have some consideration!' I can't do anything without her telling me to stop. I'm going stir-crazy!"
"Stir-crazy?" Twilight asked without looking up from her book. "Aren't you being just a little bit overdramatic?"
"No! Mr. and Mrs. Cake haven't had to use their mixer in a month because I've been stirring so much batter!"
"Pinkie, that's not what stir-crazy means."
She raised her head, looked at her five best friends, and asked, "It's not?"
All five shook their heads in harmony. 
She groaned and let her head fall until her face hit the picnic blanket again. "Well anyway, she's driving me batty, which makes sense because she's such a kooky old bat!"
"Well," Rainbow said right before taking an enormous bite of her sandwich and chewing it loudly with her mouth hanging open. "If she's gonna--"
A chunk of half-chewed food arced across the picnic blanket and plopped into Rarity's snifter of fruit punch. She gagged as she turned around and poured its contents out on the grass.
"Whoops," Rainbow said, her mouth full. "Sorry."
Still engrossed in her book, Twilight asked, "Have you tried talking to this Polly T. Burro? Maybe if you two sat down and had a nice, quiet conversation, you'd find you actually have quite a lot in common."
"Aw, nuts to that," Rainbow said with her mouth full, spraying bits of sandwich everywhere. "If somepony's not down with your awesomeness, you just gotta be even more awesome, so incredibly awesome they realize they're just jealous. And then they...." She trailed off into deep thoughts, then shrugged. "....worship you or something. I dunno, I forget what happens next."
"Although one must never forget a proper sense of grace and decorum." Sarcastically, she added, "Isn't that right, Rainbow Dash?"
Rainbow flapped a hoof dismissively as she crammed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth with the other. She gulped loudly as she swallowed. "Decorum, schmeh-corum," she said, jumping to her hooves and striking an aerodynamic pose. "If somepony's jealous of you doing what you do best, then it's their fault! Right, AJ? You're with me on this."
"I just don't know, y'all," Applejack said, adjusting her hat to shade her from the sun. "Someponies just wake up in the morning and like to put on their fussy britches, and no amount a'hooting and hollering will make them change their ways. Sounds to me this Polly T. Burro is one a'them, and there ain't nothing nopony can do to change that."
Still sprawled out on the blanket, Pinkie put her hooves on either side of her head and squeezed until her eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. 
"But I don't know how much longer I can stand this!"
With a hungry gleam in her eye, she grabbed a giant yellow squash somepony had set aside and chomped away at it until her whole head was stuck inside it. Then, the opposite side started to quiver until her head burst through it with a wet, juicy pop, chewing away at the juicy fruit. The dislodged part of the squash's skin rested atop her head between her ears.
"I mean, she's driving me out of my gourd!"
"Have you tried suffering in absolute silence?" Fluttershy asked. "I can give you some pointers, if you want."
"Darling, surely you've overcome that by now?" Rarity asked, rolling her eyes and throwing her head back. As she did so, she raised a hoof and fluffed her perfectly manicured mane. 
"Yes," Fluttershy said defensively, "but I still have the pointers." 
She reached into the saddlebag resting at her side and pulled out a scroll as thick as her foreleg. She undid the ribbon holding it together. Having been so tightly-wrapped, it unfurled itself with such force that one end shot across the picket blanket, rolled down the hill they sat atop, and sped away across the grassy field.
Twilight leaned over and inspected some of the pointers, then made an impressed whistle. "Oh, my, such meticulous attention to detail. I'm impressed!"
Fluttershy smiled and said, "Thank you, Twilight."
"But still," Rarity said, "we do hope you've overcome these by now."
Fluttershy turned more red than yellow. "Well, yes....thanks to you guys."
As everypony aww'd and gave Fluttershy a group hug, Pinkie Pie tried removing her head from the gourd. She planted her back hooves on it next to her ears and strained herself until her her skull popped free. But she put so much force behind it that when she did actually come loose, she flew ten feet through the air and started rolling down the hill.